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Press Release: Nikon and Adobe Begin Talks About Standards

Adobe's Release:
Adobe and Nikon are both enthusiastic
about the continued innovation of digital imaging technology. Both companies
recognize that ongoing advancement in current RAW formats is bringing a new
level of control, precision, and quality to the photography community and are
excited about helping to foster that innovation.

Adobe is committed to working with Nikon to ensure
that our common customers have an excellent experience when using Nikon cameras
with Adobe software, and the company is disappointed that there has been
confusion about this in the market. Adobe wants to ensure that our common
customers get the very best quality from their photos when using our products
together.Nikon has endeavored to develop the
raw image concept for digital photographers through its Nikon Electronic Format
(NEF) file, supporting software and compatible system components. Nikon
envisions its role as an innovator, and values its participation within the
industry’s organizations, so that the future for RAW images will expand in
importance and acceptance among the market’s
photographers.Nikon believes that the NEF file
has provided important image quality through Nikon’s pioneering
developments. For the future, Nikon intends to cooperate with Adobe and other
industry members in order to pursue its objective of providing images with
better quality, convenience and usefulness to end
users.SOURCE Nikon
Inc.It’s not entirely clear what either
the Nikon nor Adobe statements mean at this time. However, Thomas Knoll, primary
engineer on Adobe Camera Raw has indicated that Nikon has added a new
“mini-SDK which has the sole function of reading the white balance
parameters from a NEF file (while still allowing the host application to do its
own raw conversion).” He goes on to say that “the upcoming Adobe
Camera Raw 3.2 and DNG Converter 3.2 will use this Nikon “mini-SDK”
to provide “as shot” white balance support for the Nikon D2X, D2Hs,
and D50.” (see the original
thread on the Camera Raw User to User
Forum)Camera Raw 3.1 could not decrypt the
“As Shot” white balance metadata for the Nikon D2X, D2Hs, and D50
cameras. However, DNG Converter 3.1 did migrate the encrypted white balance
metadata to DNGs made from those cameras’ raw files.